Officials in Boston, Phoenix, Tuscaloosa, Ala., Tallahassee, Fla., and Littleton, Colo., have greatly contributed to the quality of life their residents enjoy, and they beat out 50 other applicants for the Innovation Awards. The programs have attracted considerable attention, both locally and from as far away as Australia and Germany.
Criteria included the degree to which the program is innovative; the success of the city in effectively identifying the needs and assets of the community; the success of the city in developing a strategic plan that includes a series of action steps and a time line for implementation; the success of the city in establishing a firm structure for program implementation; the extent to which the program has produced measurable benefits for the general community and local agencies and offices; and the degree to which the program is applicable to other local governments.
Beaming in Beantown
Boston won the Community Connections award for its Kids Compute 2001 program. Mayor Thomas M. Menino, in his state of the city address in January 1996, pledged that every Boston Public School would house one computer for every four students, a computer for every teacher and network and Internet access for every classroom by 2001. A major step toward realizing those lofty ambitions came in October when Boston became the first urban school district in the country to have all of its schools networked.
"We have a mayor who's willing to stick his neck out and say, 'The most important thing I can do right now is turn the schools around,'" said Steve Gag, the city's educational technology adviser.
Menino stuck his neck out far enough to commit to a five-year, $125 million technology plan called LINC -- Learning and Information Network for the Community. The LINC plan subsequently became known as Kids Compute 2001, which has reduced the student-to-computer ratio from 63-to-1 to 10-to-1 and provided fast-track technology training to roughly 60 percent of the district's 4,800 teacher. By June, 80 percent of the teachers will have completed a 15-hour training course. A critical component is what Gag called a twist to just-in-time training: the wiring is in place when the teachers are finished or just about to finish training.
"Technology is a key part of this ed-reform movement," Gag said. "You can't do ed reform and not do technology at the same time."
A $6.1 million federal grant helped jump-start the project three years ago, and more than $26 million has been raised for the project through more than 100 private- and public-sector partnerships.
Cultivating a Thriving Workforce
The New Economy Project pioneered the idea of economic gardening -- growing jobs locally by using information technology to create a nurturing environment for entrepreneurs -- and earned Littleton, Colo., the Economic Development award.
The program provides sophisticated information services and tracks "best ideas, best practices, best technology" for high-growth companies. This includes tracking construction bids for architects, developing profiles for multimedia companies on their competitors, and finding investors for foreign companies. The proof of the project's success is in the numbers, according to Christian Gibbons, business/industry affairs director in Littleton, which is enjoying a 6-percent growth rate, nearly double the national average.
It's a program that sounds very simplistic and can be customized to fit any community. But it shouldn't be underestimated, Gibbons said.
"In some ways it's so far off on the high-end scale that it scares us sometimes," he said. "We just started out with the concept of let's grow jobs at home."
One key is the variety of infrastructure used. There are traditional types such as roads and sewers, quality-of-life types such as trails and parks, and what Gibbons called intellectual infrastructure -- colleges and training programs. This allows the project to seek to increase networks and connections between industry, research facilities, universities, competitors, suppliers and customers.
That's because speed, along with image, is everything. "The rate of the flow of information is absolutely key in entrepreneurial economies," Gibbons said.
The 40,000-resident city is a suburb of Denver, home to a large cable industry. The local community college even offers a telecommunications curriculum broadcast via satellite from Denver to Littleton students.
River Runs Through it
Tuscaloosa won the Infrastructure Development award with its Fiber Optic/Traffic Camera Technology program. A river divides the city, and the metropolitan area's 150,000 residents have only two bridges to cross the river.
Thanks to a low unemployment rate in the community about 50 miles west of Birmingham, a lot of people are working, which also brings heavy traffic to the bridges and nearby streets -- 120,000 and 100,000 vehicles per day, respectively. In 1995, city officials embraced ITS and advanced transportation management systems (ATMS) technology to provide the public with realtime information about travel conditions in Tuscaloosa. Selecting a cost-effective option, the city installed 15 operational cameras tied together with more than 60,000 feet of fiber-optic cable, and plans to install variable message signs, roadway sensors and incident-detection systems linked to the existing fiber and camera network.
"What we're doing with this technology is what we've been trained to do, and that's to get the most that we can of existing infrastructure," said Joe Robinson, city engineer and director of transportation.
Information collected by ATMS technology is displayed on an electronic map reflecting up-to-the-minute traffic conditions relayed to the public via message signs, radio, Internet and television. With realtime information, police, firefighters and emergency operators are able to respond in a shorter time with the appropriate equipment. City agencies monitor the cameras 24 hours a day and regional and state public safety and transportation agencies will have access, too. As the fiber-optic cable is installed, city crews are providing connections for the school system, Internet users, and municipal and county governments. The city is also building a bypass to handle the traffic, but that will take a few years to finish, Robinson said.
Fingertips do the Walking
Phoenix at Your Fingertips earned the Arizona metropolis the Public Access award. In 1994, the city initiated a program to provide the public with electronic access to municipal information and services. The objectives required that the solution be easy to use and have a consistent look and feel.
What made this project stand out was that residents would be provided universal access and equity of service so that even those without computers or Internet connections could still use the service. The city was successful in obtaining Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program grants from the Department of Commerce in 1994 and 1995 to help fund this initiative. This resulted in the creation of Phoenix at Your Fingertips, which debuted June 30, 1995.
The Phoenix project provides the public with up-to-date electronic information and services through the Web, public-access workstations and dial-up access -- the last two, according to city officials, make this service more broadly accessible than just a home page. Phoenix at Your Fingertips, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, offers computer users free access to City Hall.
The public can get directly involved in the community, participate in special events, find out about city meetings and agendas, obtain assistance and learn about business opportunities. Users can also send and receive electronic
messages from city staff and elected officials, access the public library and its vast resources, and access other agencies' Web sites. This style of public access is in direct alignment with the city's vision of providing "seamless service" for its residents.
Feeling OK About Y2K
Deciding to offer "A Small Scale Solution to a Large Scale Problem" led Tallahassee, Fla., toward the Year 2000 Compliance award. The city, owner and operator of an electric utility whose income depends on successful management of its customer billing system, was particularly concerned since preliminary research indicated that Y2K remediation for all city government would cost $1.4 million to $3.4 million.
Instead, the city turned this problem into an opportunity to work with a local small-business owner who knew the city's data systems and would work with staff to develop a solution. "We had some folks that felt like they could do this and gave it a try," said Dinah Hart, administrative services manager of the city's Department of Management and Administration.
Eight months later, the year-2000 problem was successfully resolved at a cost of only $300,000 to the city.
The city worked with the recently established Tallahassee Training Institute, an arm of the city, to develop a strategy that would accomplish two goals: provide the tools to enable governments to resolve their Y2K concerns quickly and inexpensively, and establish a new revenue source for the city. Since the institute's primary mission is to offset possible losses in revenue as a result of electric deregulation, the concept was embraced by the City Commission. The city now has the time to plan for the replacement of existing technology, along with other budgetary priorities, rather than simply react to Y2K. It's a good thing the project was successful, Hart said, because if not, city officials would have had to look at other options -- which were never identified.
"The award is great, but it wouldn't have changed the importance of the task they completed," Hart said.
Harnessing an Award
Representatives from the winning communities will receive their awards during NLC's Congress of Cities conference this month in Kansas City, Mo.
Additional information is available online.
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